The Karpeles, a Jacksonville 'hidden treasure,' showcases manuscripts - and some art, too

Richard Minor has been director of the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum for six years. The museum, which opened in Jacksonville in 1992, is one of 10 around the country that exhibit the collection of David Karpeles, who owns more than 1 million manuscripts.

The Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum's current exhibit features letters and manuscripts written by Sigmund Freud, the Austrian neurologist considered the father of psychiatry. The Freud documents will be on display through the end of April.

Located in an architecturally striking former church on First Street at the south edge of Springfield, the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum represents something of a Jacksonville hidden treasure, despite the building's imposing size.

Even Richard Minor, a lifelong Jacksonville resident who has been the museum's director for the past six years, admits he never visited the building until he applied for a job there.

Inside the former Christian Science church built in the Greek revival style, rectangular glass cases are filled with documents assembled by David Karpeles, a math professor turned real estate investor who owns more than 1 million manuscripts, the largest private collection in the world.

Currently on display are letters and manuscripts written by Sigmund Freud, the Austrian neurologist considered the father of psychiatry. He is known for his theories on the unconscious mind and for creating the clinical practice of psychoanalysis.

The Freud documents, which will be in Jacksonville through the end of April, span the years from 1883, when he was a young doctor just beginning his career, to 1935, four years before his death.

Minor said that among the significant manuscripts on exhibit are Freud's writings on psychoanalysis in the United States, a defense of his claims as the discoverer of "The Theory of Dreams," an analysis of his own dreams and letters in which he expressed concern over the Nazi takeover of Europe.

One letter is written in English to his nephew, Edward Bernays, who is considered the founder of the public relations industry. It discusses Bernays' successful efforts to publicize "Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis," the first book of Freud's to be published in the United States.

In addition to the Freud documents, the cases at the Karpeles currently feature menus from many renowned New Orleans restaurants, an exhibit Minor scheduled to run during Mardi Gras. Unlike the Freud documents, those menus came from a local collector.

But most documents exhibited at the museum come from David Karpeles' personal collection.

Karpeles, 74, who lives in California, said during a 2001 interview with the Times-Union that he first got interested in manuscripts in the early 1970s when he visited the document room at Los Angeles' Huntington Museum, where he saw a pass signed by Abraham Lincoln giving his bodyguard a night off while Lincoln went to the theater.

Karpeles began researching manuscripts but waited until 1978 to make his first purchase, buying a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Lincoln for $40,000. At the time, Karpeles was the rare private collector in a market dominated by universities. His bidding strategy was to assume the experts knew what documents were worth. He would keep bidding until they dropped out. By the time that strategy stopped working — other private collectors had entered the market and Karpeles had gradually driven up prices — he had accumulated a collection of more than 1 million documents, he said in 2001.

Today there are 10 Karpeles museums around the country, including the Jacksonville museum, which opened in 1992. David Karpeles organizes three or four exhibits a year for each. The next exhibit in Jacksonville will feature documents about spiritualism, many of them manuscripts and letters from Arthur Conan Doyle, a believer, and Harry Houdini, a debunker.

Minor said the Jacksonville museum also rotates about six art exhibits a year through the museum. Currently, works by Jacksonville artists Adrian Rhodes and Yuwnus Asami are on display. The fact that some of Rhodes' paintings are done in a Salvador Dali-influenced surreal style that seems to go perfectly with an exhibit about Freud is simply a happy coincidence, Minor said.

Looking at a typed manuscript on which Freud had added revisions in ink, Minor said he most enjoys the manuscripts that show that giants from the past were real people living real lives. He said he loved a Mark Twain manuscript that had been stained by spilled coffee. And he was thrilled to encounter a letter written by America's second president, John Adams, that had been disfigured by a grandchild's scribbles.

Like most arts organizations, the Karpeles is feeling the pinch of a troubled economy, Minor said. Admission has always been free. The operation has been primarily underwritten by David Karpeles' personal fortune. But the collapse of the California real estate market has affected Karpeles and the individual museums are working to be more self-supporting, Minor said. One major source of income these days is rentals to groups wanting to use the museum for receptions and other public events.

Hours of operation are 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and noon to 4 p.m. Saturday. The museum is at 101 W. First St., at the corner of First and Laura streets. For more information, call (904) 356-2992 or go to www.rain.org/~karpeles/jaxfrm.html.